Ill can he rule the great, that cannot reach the small
Giorgi, I called myself a companion today—just to have those tender puppy eyes in my skull when mine met yours. When I saw yours I saw the word dog and felt the cosmic theater in motion. I wanted instantly to be a mirror for you.
I took a few moments to get myself acquainted with my own specularity. I had to find you to be what you need. I had to sit, too. I had to love the first Buddhist woman. I had to acquiesce to the fire your heart rests in. I wanted to be kindling.
So I set myself beneath you. I torched my eyes with the light that emanates from your belly. I trusted your hunger. I trusted your way of coming back to me again and again. I became a blaze for the best friend— then I saw a tick.
It sucked your blood, but not too much, and clung there like lotus leaves cling to the water. I wanted to kiss the dew on its petals. I knew I had to pull the friend from your belly and show them to you. Extraction hurt you, but I was careful— I even took the mouth with me.
When they were there, hanging by a single leg from tweezers between your eyes and mine, we whimpered. Our tails wagged timidly. We went for a walk. In the forest, they lined the duff in layer after layer. The leaves crunched. We could see it all.
The beauty of a parasite lies in what they ask us not to do. The gorgeous quality they carry is being unknown. They only want to be fed like both of us do, like both of us cry. It's a whimper, to feel you. It's a tear sent straight through our spine.
You begged for a treat from the moment. I clasped my hands in prayer around a biscuit from my fanny pack, handed it to you, and asked, Where are we going?
We heard a rumble and saw the tree line at the same time. You pulled me there, though with each tug you looked back to me softly. The forest broke where the rail ran through. A train passed before us, car after car, while you sniffed the rocks spread out all down the line. It stopped.
I snuck you beneath a train car, a box car, a proper industrial carriage lead by horsepower we've manifested in the metal we've hurt this world to pull, to extract, to siphon. We were there, together, laying down— your paws were at your cheeks. So were mine. We looked at the darting lines made of our motion slicing through the woods. We wanted it to stop. You cried, but tears could not form in your eyes. All you made was sound; all I did was listen. It went on hours like that, but the noise of the rails and the wheels and the hissing brakes kept me from connecting to you. So we shared, instead, the world we could see. The nausea and rumble it made us feel. We're going to the promised land, the tomorrow we have faith in, the tomorrow that landed us together. I stuck my tongue out, just to feel what you feel out the window. I tasted shrapnel of rust and pollen. I could tell the difference, but it all made me feel alive. I looked to you with real big tears in my eyes. We were ducked under the shadows. It all made sense. It all made me miss the quiet times, talking with you. I wanted to eat kibble and laugh with you about just how much we could eat and just how gross it was. I wanted to lap water like the sea licks the shore.
We stepped off into the train yard, hand wrapped round your leash or technically your leash was wrapped around my hand, onto a new patch of grass. We faced the road, beyond the bushes, and we both wondered how to get there. Residential street named something like Main or First, a corner store was on the other side of the barbed wire fence— swathes of land surrounded the building. It was a small town, here, still, where we ended up.
A rabbit took on a task we weren't here to see: a burrow beneath the grid rotated forty five degrees to keep us from getting where we obviously had to go. Brave bunny took on the danger between passing trains. Did she search for a carrot? Is that what took her to the other side, or was that just a cartoon someone wrote to invite children into the fun? Like the monotremic eggs she laid for us to encounter, one after another, breadcrumbing her way into a new day. With no regard for us, she would have said, as she longed to be with us.
You crawled first, then dragged me by the leash through the cheap scraping metal that shredded my back. I didn't touch it yet, but I knew I was bleeding when I crossed the street. You channeled like a clairvoyant the aromas before you. You sent me where I knew we had to go, where the earth smelled of polymer wrappings and food science and, at the center, nourishment. I saw a vision of a Snickers bar when I watched the way you lunged forward, like you were searching for a survivor in the rubble. Every moment is the experience of desperation, whether you like it or not. It's just us being pulled traumatically or ecstatically unto our last hope, however meager.
When I heard the buzzer tremor, an electronic hello from above, I knew our presence was known. It startled you, too, and your tail went down. Fear, sometimes, is an instinctive courtesy. Like meeting family or friends of those you love, a dinner you're suddenly inside of. A meal you're suddenly enjoying, cooked fresh by a heart just as scared as yours. This is what I thought when I tried to remember the last time you'd eaten.
I patted your head and waited for the clerk. We'd been out of water for a dozen hours— every time I filled your bowl the train jostled drop after drop out to the metal floor we'd grown, how quickly, to hate. Earth, sweet earth, under the architecture laid level beneath our paws. I'd been letting my nails, stubby and dirty in a way yours could never be, grow. It's been months of togetherness and all I've seen time after time is your willingness to indulge in your passion for protection upon the first instance of a thing we might call threat. When the clerk came, you looked to him. You growled from somewhere deep. I watched it cause a rattle in his finger tips as he waved to us. I asked for your faith, and so you sat. Your ears fell. You closed yourself off, looking to everything around you softly. There were snacks beyond your comprehension in every direction. You didn't even budge. I wondered if that's what it is to have faith: to ask for it. I've always wanted to be like you. I've always wanted to ask for guidance with my zeal.
A yearning, this leash, for us to be together. How could we speak through it, other than pure muscle? An accompanying word or two, from either of us, I'm sure could help. When I handed the clerk the money for the beef jerky and gallon of spring water, I felt it tug. I knew the clerk had no clue who he was working for. I told you the manager's name. I whispered it into your ear. We left, together, calmly. Inexplicable, I said, our connection is. And yet we continue to spend our time together. The force of my concern and independent responsibility. My concern for the feeling of separation. Some things take more time than others to get over— in the mean time, I am with you. Your concern for accompaniment you articulated to me, there, on the sidewalk, when you barked at the passing car. You were my guardian, struck by the fast spinning rim. It glittered and you shared the depth of your wisdom. I told you I love you as your head bobbed from side to side, sniffing out our path, as I sought a place to rest where we could curl up together. Where the day could gift us for our travels.
All I did was blink at the car you barked at, swiftly approaching the horizon, and we were in it. The forest bled into desert. I was driving, and your head was out the window. I pulled off a mile past the last shred of green.
You clasped my paw with your own and took me out of the vehicle into the desert. I was told by a yellow book based on a board game that I was in need of staying by the side of my vehicle, such that I may not become lost. And, yet, there you were: paw after paw leaving imprints in the sand. I watched the sun crash upon the point at which atmosphere met sediment. I watched it swirl or pulse or whatever you want to call heat so high, so high our eyes are barely able to conjure the word hospitable. It's bizarre to me, how the world trembles when we perceive something unfavorable. I've fallen and seized. I've watched several taken to the pillow by vertigo. I've wondered, wishing for a way it could not happen, Is there a bracing? Is there a preventative? The thoughts passed through my ears like sand as the desert swirled through my head. We were atop a monumental dune when your tail wagged. You buried your snout in the peak and in your teeth, up from the earth, was a shimmering MRE— it must have been lost here by someone neither of us could ever have hoped to remember... how could I believe someone was here before, if not for the snout excited to pull up some nourishment to last us inexplicably for the day, compressed into a single block, a single moment with the motes all around cast by azure wranglings of miracle— of my starvation came your perseverance... I thanked you, making dribble castles of my tears in a faraway place, before I kissed that healthy, wet, nose of yours.
It was our front legs that took us back into the car that brought us here. We pulled ourselves up in a blink of time. Then we were there, passenger and driver, sending ourselves on toward the horizon. The sun was setting. Desert roads never end, not until they do, but until then it's just a line and soft textures on either side. Just keep going. That's what we said to one another, nodding, as we dangerously looked each other in in eyes, rather than that windshield with the broken wiper. You said thank God it's not raining, and I said I'd do anything for a little moisture.
I kept steering anyway, I cranked up all those songs by Chopin you love to listen to, I pretended like the roads were of our imagination, I pretended they were utopic, perfect, like a crack couldn't make it's way in no matter how long it waited in line... you started snoozing with your hypnic jerks and I wondered where the line would lead... my hands were steady, my heart was sure, my eyes went out westward and I swore I saw the ocean. I almost swerved toward it, I was so excited, but I kept steady on my path. I trusted no government but fortune would offer a road to turn on. I trusted the beach to come, the gulls to sing protective over their nests and chicks and the land they call their own.
The heat caught up to us before the day snapped into the night. I passed out at at wheel and swerved off into the sand— then there was a swirl, then the dune, a brief cloud of sand did in fact emerge before the cloud of noise (it would seem) caused the crash. I think I remember wishing to you Will you take the wheel? when you did. You put your paws on the leather and your ears were tucked down, you were more scared for me than I could possibly be in my unconscious state... you sped down the highway bravely, passing speed trap after speed trap rather adeptly. I remember my foot kicking in my sleep, bracing for every brake. When we arrived at the hospital, you were smart. You knew your standing. You leaped from the driver seat to kick me out the door, at the Emergency Room, and lept back up into position, put a hind paw on the gas petal, and drove off.
I knew, eyelids fluttering, eyelashes scraping the asphalt, that you missed me already. You'd learned enough of this world, in your distant way, to give me and you what we needed.
I was in a bed when I first cried out your name. Hours after the sound of my heartbeat, rendered digital, suffused me. You were in another state by that time. Giorgi, Good luck, I cried, casting my lips into the wind.
